Sweet Surrender | スウィートは降伏 | Dulcis Trado

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"WE TALKED OF INTOLERANCE, WHILE WE WERE INTOLERANT OURSELVES"...

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"...WE MISSED THE REALITY AND THE BEAUTY OF THE FOREST BECAUSE WE WERE DIVERTED BY THE UGLINESS OF SOME OF ITS TREES".
- Alcoholics Anonymous, p50

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“Mere man alone all too often seems powerless to stay the force of his Ego. He needs assistance and needs it urgently”.
-Dr. Harry Tiebout, AA Comes of Age

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|…There is a living, breathing judgment machine inside my head. This voice in my head disguises itself as common sense and even sometimes the voice of experience, but its true essence is simply untreated alcoholism. This judge in my head typically begins his tireless rant the moment you share your experience with me from the podium, but not always. Sometimes all you have to do is look at me and the judge knows in exquisite detail what is wrong with you, and with each passing judgment the judge only get’s stronger. Once a wise man told me: “when you cry havoc and slip loose the dogs of judgment, they always come back to bite the master”. Truer words have never been spoken, for I am capable of judging myself into a very dark and lonely place.

     It is my experience that this judge in my head lives for one reason and one reason only: my death. It doesn’t care if it does it achieves this end “…by musket or pot”, either, for at the end of the long day of a bout with alcoholism, the sole purpose of the judge in my head (ego) is to kill the host. If you think this is beginning to sound like the activity of a virus, you are exactly right.

     Well do I remember sitting in meetings after I got sober and listened to old timers talking about how even after they got sober, the thing that made or broke their sobriety was the ability continue to surrender. This shocked me, for I had nothing left to surrender. I had lost my job, my money, my friends, my family, my education, even my hope and dreams. I lived in a homeless shelter, for the love of God. What was left to surrender?Sixteen very long and sweet years later I get now what they were talking about: my judgment. I have to surrender my opinions. In all things I must surrender my opinions; opinions of you, me, God, the universe, everything. I must learn to stay in the only place we really have – NOW. When I project forward or agonize back I lose sight of the only place we really have – NOW. And it is only in the NOW that I have found my relief from my opinions.

     Those rare moments in my sobriety when I manage to stay in the now and (temporarily) lose my opinions, my mind becomes very clear, I can finally hear you – all of you – and I love all of you exactly how and where you are.

     Today – and just for today – I am happy with my place in God’s universe, and none of you need fixing or my advice. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.And so it goes.COG, 1st Cl.|

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